US and Italian scientists create new world atlas of light pollution

The Milky Way, the brilliant river of stars that has dominated the night sky and human imaginations since time immemorial, is but a faded memory to one third of humanity and 80 percent of Americans, according to a new global atlas of light pollution produced by Italian and American scientists.

NOAA’s Climate Program Office announced today that it is investing $4.5 million in four projects to test technology designed to improve the Tropical Pacific Observing System, an array of buoys in the tropical Pacific used to better understand El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), how it develops, and how it affects Earth’s weather.

Unmanned technologies open new frontier in ocean science

NOAA Research and NOAA Fisheries have teamed up with academic and private sector partners to test innovative technologies that, if successful, will enable researchers to gather information on ocean conditions and marine species in remote areas of the ocean that are costly to reach and difficult to study.

The rapid loss of Arctic sea ice is a major driver of the warming trend sweeping across the Arctic in recent years, but melting sea ice is probably not behind recent cold winters in parts of Europe, Asia, and the United States, according to a new NOAA study.

The Bakken oil and gas field is leaking a lot of methane, but less than some satellites report, and less than the latest Environmental Protection Agency inventory for petroleum systems, according to the researchers’ calculations. That's the finding of the first field study measuring emissions of this potent greenhouse gas from the Bakken, which spans parts of North Dakota and Montana. The work was published today in theJournal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Editor's note: The American Geophysical Union wrote the following release on new NOAA research publishing in Geophysical Research Letters.

A new study by NOAA's Aaron Levine and Michael Mcphaden provides insight into how the current El Niño, one of the strongest on record, formed in the Pacific Ocean. The new research finds easterly winds in the tropical Pacific Ocean stalled a potential El Niño in 2014 and left a swath of warm water in the central Pacific. The presence of that warm water stacked the deck for a monster El Niño to occur in 2015, according to the study’s authors.

Measuring variations in gravity helps scientists create a height measurement system based on where water will flow. These measurements will help prepare for floods, sea level rise, and other emergencies, making our coastal communities more resilient, and aid a number of diverse industries such as agriculture, construction, transportation, and urban planning.